With the MacPro moving towards AMD, and Adobe not supporting Mercury Playback Engine for integrated graphics (although they've said they'd "like to support it") the MacBook Pro, Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013, with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M seems Adobe's only hope for Mercury Playback Engine support in the current crop of MacBook Pro / MacPro units...

While is not on the "supported" list it will work just by editing one file and adding the "GT 750M" to the list, I am not Mac oriented but if you search this forum you should find the Mac instructions for this so called "hack". I know that it requires use of the Mac "Terminal" to accomplish.

Is it worth getting the 15" MacBook Pro with the Nvidia graphics card over the 15" version without for use with both Premiere Pro & After Effects CC?

Thanks

Unfortunately, I've found that many of the users here are PC users. While they are helpful, it's rare to get anything beyond guesses for Adobe Premiere CC performance on Macs.

I've noticed that the list of "supported" GPU's is not updated all that much by Adobe. It took a while after last year's macs were released for that list to be updated with those GPUs. But the 750M has 2GB VRAM and pretty much any GPU with 1GB of VRAM or more can take advantage of the Mercury Playback Engine on Premiere CC (http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/06/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-and-gpu-support.html) With CS6, if your card isn't on the "list" you could add it using that hack that people talk about but you don't have to worry about that with CC as the above link explains.

While the regular 15" Macbook with the integrated graphics card is probably good enough to edit w/ Premiere CC, I don't think you'll be able to take advantage of any GPU acceleration because of the lack of a dedicated GPU with 1GB of VRAM. I am running Premiere CC on an iMac with an AMD GPU that isn't on the list, but does have 1GB of VRAM so I can take advantage of gpu accleration (however, while it's smoother than "software only", it definitely has it's REALLY annoying issues). I'm sure it'd be better with a newer NVIDIA card (from what I've read anyway) but like you, it's hard to get feedback from many people on these forums who use macs.

Hope this helps. I for one would go with the 750M. It's more $$$, but I'm guessing it'll be worth it. Just a guess though. I wish someone with that laptop (or even a 2013 iMac with similar GPU) would chime in with their thoughts.

Is it worth getting the 15" MacBook Pro with the Nvidia graphics card over the 15" version without for use with both Premiere Pro & After Effects CC?

You'll spend a bit more to get the one with the nVidia GPU, but I don't think you'll regret it. Out of the gate, CC isn't likely to natively support the card. But like me, all you have to do is delete the CUDA and OpenCL (if you want) text files from the CC install directory, and it'll instantly recognize the card for use with both APIs. It'll do so without presenting you with a warning that you have to click through, and more importantly, AME will use it as well.

[For those unaware: when using a non-supported GPU with CC, you'll get a warning that it's not tested, but you're welcome to use MPE in hardware mode regardless. However, AME will not use the card. In order to get AME to use the card, you have to either edit the text files, or delete them. I prefer the latter, of course.]

Could you elaborate on this a little more? I just purchased the Late-2013 MBPr with the NVIDIA 750M. Not "officially" supported it seems for CUDA inside After Effects (works just fine in Premiere CC for me though – not sure why that is however,) but I would love to have access to the car in AME and AE as well.

So what text files do I delete? Do I need to re-install all the Creative Cloud apps, or can I do it after I've installed? Thanks in advance for your help Jason!

All you need to do is Right Click on the Application Premiere or After Effects

Yes, you certainly can do all of this. Or, you can just delete the file altogether and it'll just work. It's much easier, and you don't have to chase down the exact model name and number of the GPU to make it work properly.

I have the exact same problem with the newest version of Ae CC (13.7). I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and my Macbook seems to have difficulties running the program. As suggested, I've been looking for the CUDA text files in Ae application contents but find nothing. Is it possible that this technique is no longer possible with the 13.7 version?

I have the exact same problem with the newest version of Ae CC (13.7). I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and my Macbook seems to have difficulties running the program. As suggested, I've been looking for the CUDA text files in Ae application contents but find nothing. Is it possible that this technique is no longer possible with the 13.7 version?

Thanks in advance,

Zach

Ditto, Having the same problem with rendering. Any suggestions for the new update? Couldn't find any text files for openCL or CUDA in the content folders as suggested.

Not necessary. There is no longer a supported cards file. If you have a Nvidia or AMD card with (I think) +1GB ram, it should work without any intervention. Note that the GPU is not a panacea - it helps with specific things, like resizing, aaccelerated effects, and some h.264 encoding.